How CT&A Helps Leading Companies Build Top Talent

 

CTA is a boutique organization by design. We don’t aspire to have dozens of recruitment desks and the broadest client base, as our greatest service to our clients grows from  the close partnerships we develop with them.  

Our focus on deep service provides the best of an ‘in house’ recruiter - we get your culture and can hone in on a successful candidate’s attributes in addition to their skill sets.  We engage with our candidates thoroughly to understand their needs and determine the best fit for both sides.   Additionally,  the insights we’ve garnered from ongoing work with companies at many stages of growth and success serves our clients in ways that a strict in-house recruiting model cannot.

Our experience helping corporations grow over time allows us insight into the developing needs and challenges of our clients, including those which they may not see on their own.  As a trusted partner, we have a hand in the growth of many companies, bringing the lessons learned and networks built from years of experience to bear on each client’s organizational structure.  We are here for our clients, for the long term.

Below are some examples of how we’ve worked in deep partnership with companies to maximize their success over time.  Do you see your company faced with any of these challenges now or in the future? Give us a call; we look forward to working with you!

 

 

CTA Retainer Allows for Rapid Successful Scaling by Renew Financial

Endorsed by President Obama and heralded by Scientific American as one of the top twenty ideas to change the world was the PACE financial program,  pioneered in large part by Renew Financial.  With these  endorsements the company received a significant influx of venture capital and retained Chris Turzo and Associates to scale quickly as they built their core sales team from scratch.  

Within 6 months CTA scaled the sales team throughout California with key placements in fast growth markets to triple the sales force. CT&A remains active with Renew on strategic hires as the company continues its rapid growth. February 2015-ongoing

 

Strategic Partnership at Work with Jinko Solar

Nigel Cockroft, General Manager for Jinko Solar USA, had worked  with Chris Turzo & Associates for many years to staff the teams at two of his former companies, Hanwha SolarOne and GCL Solar.  At Jinko, he continues to partner strategically with CT&A on organizational development and challenging recruitments for key positions, many in sales and marketing.

CT&A’s partnership  with  Jinko evolved as the company climbed from a second tier player to a top three player in the solar module space.  With  that growth, Cockcroft enlisted CT&A  to select and administer a team balancing  assessment that helped ensure Jinko’s continued competitiveness in the marketplace.   The results of that work made it clear that Jinko was well positioned organizationally for the long term.

CT&A continues to work opportunistically with Jinko by recruiting  passive top notch candidates into the organization at key junctures.  These candidates are often hand-picked by Jinko management and CTA is engaged to specifically recruit these key players.

Our partnership  with Jinko continues to deepen and provides a prime example of how close relationship with the right recruiter can build a top notch organization over time.   2011- ongoing

 

Solar Frontier Partners with CTA to Build Global Teams

Solar Frontier’s work with  CT&A began in 2010, with our successful recruitment of  Solar Frontier’s lead Executive to engineer its entry into the US Market.  Following that hire, we helped scale the US team, recruiting top Sales, Operations and Engineering talent.  Japanese management then retained CTA to scale similarly in Europe, where  we successfully recruited of the Regional Head of Sales along with Sales Leads for both Italy and France.

CT&A continues to be the preferred provider of talent as Solar Frontier expands its projects, with a new facility under production in Buffalo, NY. 2010-ongoing

 

Chris Turzo & Associates Executes Strategic Engineering Hire for Clean Power Finance

In July 2015, Clean Power Finance, a solar industry leader in the financing of residential and light commercial solar systems, recognized the need to drive its business towards a more mature O&M strategy and identified system performance as a pillar of long term profitability.  To implement their strategy effectively,  they needed to make a key hire with very specific expertise and attributes.  The successful candidate would be an engineer with great depth of experience in monitoring, equipment and software development, as well as an understanding of how to approach and overcome installation challenges.  The VP of Operations turned to CT&A  with its deep industry network to find someone with these specific requirements.  We surfaced a solid field of 5 candidates within weeks, all local to San Francisco and they quickly hired a stellar individual who now performs exceptional work for the company.

CT&A’s specialized network and thorough knowledge of the field made a potentially challenging recruitment job efficient.

 

Origis Energy Engages Chris Turzo & Associates as  Strategic Partner for Market Entry and Comprehensive Recruitment into Key Solar Markets

Origis Energy, a global solar developer with close to 60MW of assets under management in Europe, a 400MW pipeline in the Americas and a very strong, committed development fund, had moved its headquarters from Brussels to Miami.  As they sought to understand the US market better and to scale their team, Guy Vanderhaegen, Founder and Managing Partner, turned to Chris Turzo & Associates to help with the search for a Director of Business Development.  This was after efforts to spearhead this growth through  internal recruitment efforts and partnership with less specialized recruiters failed to deliver good results.  

Chris Turzo & Associates delivered the first core hire who has been instrumental in development of the current robust pipeline.  Origis then engaged CT&A to scale the entire team (Project Finance, Developers, Engineering, EPC, etc.), to advise on organizational development and to help make strategic industry introductions for possible deals of all kinds.  In Guy’s words, “Until we met you guys, we had not had any real luck in finding what we wanted, but every introduction you make is right on target and fits our organization and culture.  We are glad to be working with you.”  May 2015-ongoing

 

Ikanow retains Chris Turzo & Associates to Build its Sales and Customer Success Teams from Scratch

Chris Morgan, Co-Founder and CTO at Ikanow, needed to take his organization to the next level.  With a highly flexible and scalable predictive analytics oriented Cybersecurity solution and a handful of key customers for his bootstrapped company, it was time to expand the market and build the sales team.

He retained Chris Turzo & Associates to help define and fill key roles.  CT&A executed quickly and effectively on the first core searches,  Chief Revenue Officer and Vice President of Customer Success.  CT&A then worked closely with the VP-Field Operations to find him his first Sales Engineer and helps scale the team on an ongoing basis.  June 2014 - ongoing

 

Perseverance Pays Off with Clark Street Associates Quest for a Founding Cybersecurity Executive

Clark Street Associates, a boutique, industry leading consultancy, bridges the gap between government funding and the start-up companies that need cash, but lack the skills or knowledge to find and secure it.  Clark Street’s two core verticals, Cleantech and Cybersecurity, dove-tail perfectly with Chris Turzo & Associates practice areas, and our specialization proved a key to success with this client.  

CT&As first search for Clark Street required all of our industry and networking expertise.   The successful candidate needed a rare mix of government funding experience along with deep knowledge of the culture, companies and individuals in the Silicon Valley cyberspace start-up world.  CT&A leveraged its existing network to mine for referrals while employing its in-depth research process to dig up that perfect candidate.  We surfaced a strong field of applicants, but the top one took another offer late in the process and by that time, the second candidate had decided on another position as well.  CT&A began afresh, dug more deeply and produced a second strong referral network.  In the end we found the perfect candidate, ripe for his next step and with just the right mix of government/industry background.  Clark Street was up and running.  June 2015

 

Strategic Recruitment Transforms United Technologies Aerospace Systems Division

Marc Suarez,  long standing as both client and a candidate of Chris Turzo & Associates, took a role as Director-Operations for one of the largest divisions of United Technologies Aerospace Systems. Charged with integrating and centralizing best practices across a $1+B group after the largest merger in the organization’s history, he needed  to upgrade his talent across the division and across site operations and site materials roles at key facilities nationwide.  This task was made more challenging due to the culture of the acquired company, which was highly decentralized and not operationally focused.  

Marc retained CT&A to recruit to the company’s world class talent standards at sites in geographically challenging areas. We brought in several winning candidates to General Management, Operations, Materials, Production and other roles throughout the United States.  

CT&A continues to feed top notch talent to UTA on a strategic basis.  September 2014 -ongoing

 

CTA rises to the Challenge of Difficult Geographies to Find Talent for Far-Flung Locations

The CFO of Getrag, a $3+B German transmission manufacturer, retained Chris Turzo & Associates in 2007 to find a critical Plant Controller for its start up manufacturing facility in Eastern Slovakia.  CT&A, known for its global reach and its in depth research capabilities to find and deliver local, world class talent in tough geographies, fielded a perfect fit, satisfying  this German Automotive group with high standards and further cementing our reputation in global search efforts.

Since that successful search in 2007, CT&A has been one of Getrag’s preferred recruiting partners.   CT&A has been retained  to build core Manufacturing Facility teams (General Management, Supply Chain, Quality, Finance, etc.) all over the world as well as to fill critical HQ functions including Chief Compliance Officer and Global Head of Business Process Management.  The higher the standards and the tougher the assignment, the more CT&A thrives, and our 8 year partnership with Getrag has allowed us to prove our mettle.  2007-ongoing